C.J. Floyd

Created by Robert O. Greer
(1944–)

“The only black bail bondsman operating on Denver’s Bail Bondsman’s Row,” C.J. FLOYD is one sleuth who likes to spend his dough. He’s a sucker for antiques–be they license plates, blues records or classic cars (including his beloved BelAir), and he owns season tickets for the Broncos and the Nuggets. Because he tends to spend money faster than he can make it, he often ends up taking on cases he’d just as soon avoid. He learned the business from his alcoholic uncle, who raised him, taught him the bailbonding ropes, and then conveniently died, leaving him the business and the aging Victorian building on Bondsman’s Row that houses it.

Despite the fact C.J., and his sometimes-sidekick Billy DeLong, are black, all the trumpeting about comparisons to Walter Mosely’s Easy Rawlins are way way off. As the New York Times puts it, he’s likable enough, but even with the cowboy hat C. J. “barely sticks out in the growing mob of loner P.I.’s who drive vintage cars, appreciate good blues and raise the flag for their little patches of regional turf.”

There’s something happening here, alright, but my initial feeling, upon reading the first few novels, was that author Greer needed to tighten up his writing a bit, and find his own voice–or, even better, let Floyd find his.

And he may have just done that. From Publishers Weekly:

In 2006’s The Fourth Perspective, C.J. ditches the bail bonding and bounty hunting rackets to embrace his true passion, opening a collectibles store specializing in cowboy memorabilia in Denver. Not that life suddenly calms down — he soon finds himself mixed up in stolen books, murder and a $1-million daguerreotype, all set against a background that draws “deeply on Old West history and the many facets of African-American life in cowboy country…”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Robert Greer spent his formative years in Gary, Indiana before graduating from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He subsequently earned degrees in dentistry, medicine and pathology from Howard University and Boston University, and taught pathology, medicine, surgery, and dentistry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, specializing in head and neck pathology and cancer research.

NOVELS

• The Devil’s Hatband (1996) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Devil’s Red Nickel (1997) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Devil’s Backbone (1998) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Resurrecting Langston Blue (2005) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Fourth Perspective (2006) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Mongoose Deception (2007) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Blackbird, Farewell (2008) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• First of State (2010) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
  A prequel.

SHORT STORIES

• “A Matter of Policy” (2004, Shades of Black)

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• The Official Robert Greer Website
  Just like it says, dude…
• Rocky Mountain Eyes
  Sleuths, Bounty Hunters and Other Cowboys from Colorado, Montana, Wyoming & Idaho.
• Bounty Hunters
  “Not your average nine-to-five job.”

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.